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As cities across California crack down on homeless encampments, the City of Eureka is trying to strike a balance between compassion and effective enforcement. 

At next week’s meeting, the Eureka City Council will consider an ordinance that, if approved, would increase penalties for “unlawful camping, sitting, and lying in public spaces” from an infraction to a misdemeanor. The modified ordinance would allow the city to redirect offenders to community-based rehabilitative services instead of jail through a municipal program called Law Enforcement Alternative Diversion (LEAD).

“This adjustment aims to assist individuals … where other forms of treatment or intervention have not been accepted or proven effective,” the staff report states. “The City remains committed to a compassionate approach, prioritizing access to comprehensive support services, including shelter, housing assistance, mental health and substance use treatment, job training and other essential programs.”

The push to streamline the city’s homeless ordinances comes in response to last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which gave cities more power to cite, fine and arrest people for sleeping in public spaces — even when there’s nowhere else to sleep. The ruling effectively overturned the Ninth Circuit’s Martin v. Boise decision, issued in 2018, which held that local governments cannot punish someone for sleeping outside when no alternative shelter is available.

More than two dozen California cities have passed new measures restricting encampments.

It remains to be seen what Eureka will do with the newfound new enforcement powers. The Eureka Police Department and the city’s team of mental health clinicians view the proposed ordinance as a potential solution to some of the city’s most persistent issues with the unhoused community. However, critics worry that the “criminalization of homelessness” will put vulnerable people at risk.”

‘Stop the Sweeps’

The proposed ordinance was first presented to the city council during a special meeting in January. At subsequent meetings, homeless advocates, including representatives from Affordable Homeless Housing Alternatives (AHHA) and the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction (HACHR), have urged the city to adopt a more compassionate approach to the city’s homelessness crisis. 

Nezzie Wade, co-founder and president of AHHA, told the Outpost she’s seen an uptick in “sweeps” at encampments behind the Bayshore Mall and in Old Town, near St. Vincent de Paul’s dining facility and the Eureka Rescue Mission. People living in their vehicles are also being targeted, she said. 

“People leave for a bit because they have to, but there really isn’t an option to camp legally or park legally for anyone who doesn’t have money or resources,” Wade said. “We do not have housing, we do not have shelter [and] we do not have adequate supportive services for everyone to have a case manager.”

Ethan Makulec, executive director of HACHR, which provides mobile outreach and syringe exchange services in Arcata and Eureka, also reported an increase in enforcement.

“In the last few weeks or months, basically every single service day, we’ve had multiple people coming up to us with a story about … a negative interaction with law enforcement,” Makulec told the Outpost. “People’s belongings are getting taken, people’s communities are being disrupted, people’s lives are being thrown into further instability, and from our end that certainly sounds like an increase [in enforcement] or at least a continuation of violence that unhoused people are constantly facing.”

EPD Commander Leonard LaFrance and Sergeant Jon Omey, who leads the department’s Community Safety Engagement Team (CSET), disputed claims that EPD has increased enforcement at local homeless encampments. “Nothing has changed with the way we approach those situations,” Omey told the Outpost.

“Before we do anything, we repeatedly contact the individual in person to let them know what resources are available,” he continued. “Then we [issue] a tag, or a ‘notice to vacate’ form, that outlines the municipal code and [provides] 24 hours for them to stop storing their belongings in the current location, or else it will be picked up by the police department. We don’t just throw stuff away.”

The 24-hour “notice to vacate” is rarely enforced because most people voluntarily comply, Omey said. 

“There’s never a hard line unless [they’re] in an area where there’s absolutely zero tolerance [for encampments], like Carson Park,” he continued. “We’re not going to tolerate them camping out next to the playground. … For the most part — especially if the individuals are out of sight — if we receive a complaint, we will still give them the notice, but depending on the size of the encampment and the person’s condition … we’ll work with them. We don’t just come back the next day and take all their stuff and arrest them.”

If the situation escalates and someone is arrested, their belongings are confiscated and stored at EPD, Omey said. If the individual isn’t there when their belongings are taken, officers will leave another form to let them know where their stuff has been taken and when they can pick it up.

When CSET was formed in 2018, the city was looking to address problematic encampments that had spread into Old Town after hundreds of people were forcibly evicted from a blighted piece of city property in the Palco Marsh, known by some as “Devil’s Playground.” 

LaFrance, who led CSET up until recently, said the program has evolved over the years, shifting from a crime-focused policing unit to more of a social services provider. For the first time in years, CSET is fully staffed with a sergeant, an officer with the county’s Mobile Intervention Services Team (MIST), an Old Town officer, two rangers, a homeless liaison and a volunteer substance abuse/mental health professional. The unit also shares two homeless outreach workers with Uplift Eureka. 

“The difference between when we started in 2018 and now is we’re bringing a lot of resources to people, whether it’s assistance with housing, employment, rehab or mental health,” LaFrance said. “Our foundation is still the same: we aim to balance accountability with compassion. We want to find the underlying causes of why people are on the street and help connect them with resources directly. Once you get them stabilized and they’re doing better in life, society is better.”

EPD hasn’t always employed the compassionate approach. There was a time not so long ago when the department would conduct “sweeps” of encampments on public property, forcibly removing everyone and everything in sight.

“I remember when I started here in 2007/2008, like, eight of us would go out there and do sweeps,” LaFrance said. “It was a different time. We would take property, cite everybody and there was very, very little outreach. That’s just how we operated back then. Now, I find the word ‘sweep’ offensive because we don’t do sweeps anymore. We do targeted enforcement.”

Asked to explain the difference between the two, LaFrance described “sweeps” as “full-on removal” of people and property where “everyone is either taken to jail or tagged.” Targeted enforcement, on the other hand, is focused on “problematic individuals” who’ve had numerous encounters with police.

“We offer resources for a couple weeks and talk to them, then we tagged their property,” LaFrance explained. “We do more outreach, and if they’re still refusing, we’ll probably tag their property again because it’s usually not a one-time go. We do more outreach, and then, if it’s just not working, we’re done. That could [apply to] one individual or one camp that is causing problems. … Full-on enforcement doesn’t work. It’s on the table still, but it’s not the main focus. We’re trying to understand why people are homeless and the underlying causes.”

People living on the street may refuse services for a variety of reasons. Some people might have safety concerns stemming from negative encounters with law enforcement or bad experiences at shelters. Others aren’t willing to abide by the rules imposed by shelters, some of which only let people in if they’re sober. 

“You can only lead people to water so much,” LaFrance said. “After a while it’s like, ‘Hey, this is not working. What’s the next step?’ We’ve tried to help, but there’s still a huge impact on society. … When an individual commits a serious crime, that’s when we work with the [district attorney’s] office and say, ‘Here’s the impact. We think the causation is drugs, mental illness, whatever it is. How do we solve this problem to stop it from occurring in the future? Does this person need to be locked away because he’s unwilling to make the decision on his own?’”

Circling back to the proposed ordinance, LaFrance emphasized that the proposed changes won’t change EPD’s enforcement strategies or the people they target. Increasing the penalty from an infraction to a misdemeanor will provide the department with a more effective tool to deal with “problematic individuals,” he said.

“I know a lot of people are worried that this is gonna be our primary strategy, but our strategy is not changing,” he said. “We look at who’s causing the problem. We have people in Old Town — like the older gentleman I often see sweeping out in front of Ramone’s — who have no impact and keep stuff clean. Are we gonna target them? Absolutely not. Why would we? It doesn’t make sense for us when we have 20 other people we need to deal with.”

Still, Makulec feared the proposed ordinance would actively harm vulnerable people by “furthering the cycle of criminalization against the unhoused community.” If someone is struggling with substance abuse and they’re taken out of the community they trust, involuntary treatment could put their lives at risk, he said. 

“One of the most common times for people to overdose is within 48 hours after having to leave a forced detox situation, whether that’s involuntary detox in a hospital, a forced treatment program that you did not choose to go to of your own free will [or] jail, those are scenarios that are much more likely to increase the risk of death for people,” he continued. “And when [encampments] are constantly being disrupted and people don’t have a place to go … there’s no one to check on them to make sure they’re okay if something goes wrong.”

Makulec also disputed the notion that a harsher punishment would motivate someone to turn their life around. People need supportive services and a safe place to live, he said. “There needs to be places where you can set up your camp, and it’s not going to be labeled as problematic by the police because it’s inconvenient to a passerby or to them.”

The proposed ordinance says the city’s LEAD program would provide “proactive, rehabilitative alternatives to criminal prosecution by connecting individuals with case management and supportive services that foster long-term personal growth and stability.” However, Wade questioned whether the city has adequate resources to support such a program. 

“What are the diversion options for housing, detention or retention ‘services’?” she asked. “In larger cities, there are generally more options for folks, but in Eureka/Humboldt, what do we have? Are they planning on sending people out of the area, much like we do or have done with youth? Who pays for the diversion programs or services since many of the folks who will be impacted are without money and resources?” 

While the ordinance doesn’t explicitly state which diversion programs participants would be sent to, consenting individuals “charged with a violation” would, in lieu of being taken to jail, be taken to a “facility providing social services related to mental health, housing, and/or substance abuse treatment.”

Eureka’s Managing Mental Health Clinician Jacob Rosen, who oversees Crisis Alternative Response Eureka (CARE), was sympathetic to concerns surrounding the ordinance but said he was “very confident” that city staff and EPD “are up to the task.”

“This is something that has to be implemented delicately. As a mental health professional, that’s something that is very important to me,” Rosen told the Outpost. “I think [EPD] has demonstrated over the last many years that they have really made shifts in department priorities and training. The goal of consolidating these ordinances is really to be able to give new tools for very select situations. This isn’t going to be for the person who’s contacted for the first time for camping. This is going to be for the person who’s contacted for the 20th time.” 

The proposed changes to the ordinance would help the city reach the “narrow demographic” of people who are resistant to services, Rosen said, many of whom aren’t willing to change their lifestyle because of substance abuse or significant mental health issues. 

“Some people may be experiencing something called anosognosia,” he said, referring to a neurological condition that affects someone’s ability to recognize their own mental illness or disability. “In those cases, we’re not so much looking at misdemeanors for camping; we’re more looking at, you know, does this person need to be detained for psychiatric treatment? Do they need to be on a 5150?”

In the Field with CSET

On a recent rainy afternoon, the Outpost joined two CSET officers out in the field to get a better understanding of how EPD conducts enforcement and interacts with the people living in encampments. 

Driving past St. Vincent de Paul’s Third Street dining facility, Officer Jayme Clark pointed out several waterlogged tents lining the sidewalk across the street. “This is a ‘no camping’ zone, but we don’t do tent enforcement when it’s raining,” she said. “We don’t have people take their tents down in the rain, we just don’t.” When it’s not raining, CSET officers usually ask people camped on the sidewalk to take down their tents and stow them against the wall or fence to provide access to the sidewalk. 

Asked about previous claims of increased enforcement at encampments, Clark emphasized that the people being arrested “have committed crimes at one point in time.” She recalled one person who, after numerous interactions with CSET officers, was arrested for theft and burglary.

“He’s been in treatment before, and I’d been trying to see if he would be willing to go back into treatment,” Clark explained. “He has a family that cares about him, and they would take him back home. … He was a suspect in a burglary and, in searching his property, we found stolen property, so he went to jail.”

After he was arrested, Clark tried to salvage what she could of his belongings. Unfortunately, there were dog feces, old food, and mold inside his tent, so it had to be thrown away. “We can’t store something that has animal or human waste on it because it’s a health and safety hazard,” she said. “We have to dispose of it. We don’t have a choice.”

As we pulled up to the city’s corp yard to pick up the side-by-side CSET uses to get to encampments in the greenbelt, Clark recalled another instance where she arrested a man for a felony warrant. At the time of his arrest, he was a ways away from his camp and asked if she would pick up his things. She had to throw out most of his food, but said she was able to salvage his sleeping bag, tarps, as well as his children’s birth certificates and social security cards.

“We really care about people; that’s why we do what we do,” she said, referring to her fellow officers. “The last thing we want to see is [unhoused people] with nothing … but there comes a certain point where we have to say, ‘This isn’t safe for anybody anymore and it has to be removed.’ But before we even get to that point of making any decision, we will exhaust every other effort first. We don’t take things to just take things, ever.”

We met up with Officer Dillon Huffman at the corp yard and piled into a side-by-side emblazoned with EPD’s logo. We stopped by a few abandoned encampments tucked in the trees along the Hikshari’ Trail, some of which were in the process of being cleaned up by the city and volunteers with the PacOut Green Team.

“This was a really large camp with a lot of criminal activity that was creating a lot of issues,” Huffman said as he looked out over the cleared area. “I found a $5,000 generator that was stolen from one of the local businesses here. We also found equipment that was stolen from the Special Olympics’ storage unit. The PacOut Green Team came out here and did a wonderful job with the cleanup. … I heard they filled multiple dumpsters with trash.”

While the greenbelt is known as a popular camping spot, we only encountered one person in their tent, though there were surely others further down the trail. Huffman could hear their dog barking and made our presence known. “Hello, hello, Eureka Police Department,” he shouted as he made his way into the trees. Eventually, a man poked his head out of the tent.

When Huffman returned to our group, I asked if he was familiar with the man in the tent. “Yeah, I’ve been working with him for a while, and I know he’s waiting on some resources,” he said. “He keeps to himself, and he just told me he’s trying to stay dry. We’ve been working with him at this spot, and he knows he can’t stay here, but that’s not something I’m going to try to address today. I don’t want him to get soaked and ruin his stuff when it can be done another time.”

As we made our way back to the corp yard, Clark pointed out another abandoned camp and said CSET spent months trying to relocate a pregnant couple that lived there. They were able to able to convince the mother to seek prenatal care, and the same day she delivered her baby, Clark said. After she gave birth, the mother returned to the encampment, and the baby went into foster care.

“It was a really difficult situation,” Clark said. 

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The Eureka City Council will discuss the proposed ordinance — linked here — at its upcoming meeting at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 18. The full agenda can be found at this link.